By the time the Miami Heat gets on a plane to head home tonight, the NBA’s defending champion could have a stranglehold on the race to finish with the league’s best record.

All it has to do is win at San Antonio. That, of course, will be no easy task.

The Heat (57-15) holds a two-game lead in the overall standings over the Spurs (55-17). A win essentially would provide Miami a four-game cushion with nine remaining, given that Miami also would control any potential head-to-head tiebreaker with San Antonio.

Of course the game could have meant so much more had Miami won at Chicago on Wednesday. The Heat’s winning streak would have been at 29 today (after its win at New Orleans on Friday), and the Spurs might have been the last real obstacle to Miami’s breaking the NBA-record 33-game winning streak set by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1971-72 season.

Oh well, this game between the best of the East and West should be able to stand on its own, certainly as a possible preview of the NBA Finals.

The only other meeting between the clubs this season was on Nov. 29 in Miami, a strange game in that Spurs coach Gregg Popovich — citing a desire to rest his best players at the end of a long trip — sent Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker and Danny Green home before the game.

With guys like Patty Mills, Nando De Colo and Matt Bonner filling out the starting lineup — they have combined to make four other starts this season — the Spurs almost beat the Heat anyway, leading by five with 2:13 left before getting outscored 12-2 in a wild finish that gave the Heat a 105-100 win.